Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'll be making the formal opening statements on behalf of the Office of the Correctional Investigator. My name is Howard Sapers, and I'm the correctional investigator for Canada, appointed about two and a half years ago. I'll go as quickly as I can through this, being mindful of the time.
As correctional investigator, my job is to be an independent ombudsman for federal offenders. It's also my role to review and to make recommendations on the correctional service's policies and procedures, and to ensure that areas of concern are identified and appropriately addressed. My mandate expresses important elements of the criminal justice system. The Office of the Correctional Investigator reflects Canadian values of respect for the law and for human rights and the public's expectation that correctional staff and senior managers are accountable for the administration of law and policy on the public's behalf. Good corrections, after all, equals public safety.
Today I am here to discuss one of the key issues raised in my latest annual report, and I thank you very much for the opportunity to address you. The issue I wish to focus on is the growing crisis regarding aboriginal inmates. The overrepresentation of natives in Canada's prisons and penitentiaries is well known. Nationally, aboriginal people are less than 2.7% of the Canadian population, but they constitute almost 18.5% of the total federal prison population. For women, this overrepresentation is even more dramatic. They represent 32% of women in federal penitentiaries.
Alarmingly, this huge overrepresentation has grown in recent years. While the federal inmate population in Canada actually decreased between 1996 and 2004, the number of first nations people in federal institutions increased by almost 22%. Moreover, the number of federally incarcerated first nations women increased by a staggering 72% over the same period. We estimate the overall incarceration rate of aboriginal Canadians to be 1,024 per 100,000, or almost nine times higher than that for non-aboriginals.
While the Correctional Service of Canada is not responsible for the actions of individuals, the social conditions, or the policy decisions that help shape its offender population, it is responsible for operating in compliance with the law and ensuring that all offenders are treated fairly. It is my conclusion that the Correctional Service of Canada falls short of this standard by allowing for systemic discrimination against aboriginal inmates. It's important to understand what I mean by systemic discrimination and to appreciate the issues that have been raised for many years by my office--the continued disadvantaged position of aboriginal offenders in terms of timely and safe reintegration.
Discrimination can and does occur in situations where there is no intent to treat someone unfairly. The Canadian Human Rights Commission, in their December 2003 report entitled “Protecting Their Rights”, indicated that, “The defining feature of discrimination is its effect.” The Canadian Human Rights Commission identified systemic discrimination as, again, “The creation, perpetuation or reinforcement of persistent patterns of inequality among disadvantaged groups. It is usually the result of seemingly neutral legislation, policies, procedures, practices or organizational structures.”
My last annual report presents a detailing of the persistent pattern of disadvantaged outcomes resulting from existing policies, procedures, practices, and organizational structures. The focus of this report is about inequitable results or outcomes from current Correctional Service of Canada policies and practices. For example, inmates of first nation, Métis, and Inuit heritage face routine over-classification, resulting in their placement in minimum-security institutions at only half the rate of non-aboriginal offenders.
The over-classification for aboriginal women is even worse. For example, at the end of September of this year, native women made up 45% of maximum--